Weird War 2 - The Pacific Theatre

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Also balloon bombs but I don't see much potential there. No matter how much you dial up the weird they never start looking good.

Balloon bombs plus biotechnology plus death ray menaces the West Coast with maser-armed solar-powered skywhales!

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by L.J.Steele

There's a few pages on it in Ristaino's Port of Last Resort (2001) which talks about the various refugee communities in inter-war era Shanghai.

And I've read about the Whites there, mostly as a periphery to an in interest in "Grand Central Spy" types of cities. It was the fleet at Vladivostok that I did not read.

Though while we are on the Whites, there could be all sorts of MacGuffins gotten from them. Perhaps one monk has an icon that scares away demons? Or Shanghai in general. One of the local rabbis knows how to make golems? And of course look at all those Tongs. Maybe one of them knows the Touch of Death? And anything can turn up the interior including things with supernatural properties. Hey! Every red-blooded white man(sarcasm mode for anyone who needs that) "knows" that you never can tell about these "Inscrutable Orientals".

Of course English and Americans have no weird Macguffins about them. They are not enigmatic like all the other ethnicities. They just have square-jawed two-fisted heroes who can beat people up without bruising their fists and never run out of ammunition. Oh and all their women are beautiful and obsessed with the hero, I forgot that.

Sarcasm aside, Shanghai is a good place to put any mysterious thing you want in a World War 2 setting. There is day to day espionage and crime galore. Plus if you want a Cliffhangers, or even a fantastical element, it is not hard to put it in.

[lwcamp]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

There do seem to have been a lot more shark attacks then. Personally I think it's because castaways just look more vulnerable then confident swimmers and surfers. Then too it is apparently a matter of species and some kinds of shark are just more likely to be maneaters.

There are also a lot fewer sharks. They don't reproduce rapidly and they are being severely over-fished. Oceanic white-tips (the species responsible for munching on the Indianapolis victims) are at just a tiny fraction of their former numbers.

Luke

[Michele]

Originally Posted by L.J.Steele

I found a bit more. Some of Stark's people made their way to San Francisco. If you google the army transport ship USAT Merritt, you'll find a site collecting stories of the refugees arrival in San Fran.

There's some interesting sounding folks among them, about which I've thusfar found little.

Prince Alexis Chegodaieff, officer candidate
Lieutenant General Peter Heieskanin, engineer
Captain Timothy Taracousio, aviator

If you are looking for info on these three, that article's translitterations aren't doing you any favors.

For instance, here's a summary of Petr G. Heyskanen's military career:
http://www.grwar.ru/persons/persons.html?id=9435
I found him just by looking up Петр Хейсканен, which sounded realistically appropriate.

There is a prince Алексей Чегодаев-Саконский who seems to have had something to do with the Czarist Navy, so maybe Alexis was a relative.

As to Taracusio, that's a complete oddball and I don't see any vaguely possible Russian-sounding name.

[L.J.Steele]

Thanks. This seems to be the rabbit hole that just keeps giving plot ideas.

The war train Zaamurets was the behemoth of the 1910s and 1920s.

Heavily armored. Bristling with guns. Everywhere it went, Zaamurets was the biggest, baddest thing around. Not many foes could touch it. If you possessed this train, you ruled the rails of early 20th-century Eurasia.

Even more stunning, this awesome, self-propelled war machine went on a journey across the world. The years-long voyage carried the train through Ukraine, Russia and China — illustrating the chaos and uncertainty of the era. The leviathan served in Tsarist, Bolshevik, Czech, White Russian and several Chinese armies.

https://warisboring.com/a-remarkable...cross-eurasia/